Robert Mugabe should face trial say US doctors

US doctors who inspected Zimbabwe's health care facilities say Robert Mugabe should be tried for crimes against humanity.

6:05PM GMT 13 Jan 2009

The recommendation came in a damning report published after the group's fact-finding mission to Zimbabwe last month.

They were forced to flee after interviewing 92 health workers, patients, nurses and members of the public, and being accused by the government of being American spies.

The doctors, members of a group called Physicians for Human Rights, also concluded that the United Nations should take over the country's health system.

"The UN Security Council ... should enact a resolution referring the crisis to the International Criminal Court for investigation and to begin the process of compiling documentary and other evidence that would support the charge of crimes against humanity," said Dr Frank Donaghue, chief executive officer of the group.

"There are no public hospitals open, none, all the clinics are closed, there is no health care for pregnant women and the cholera statistics are under-declared.

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"The Mugabe regime intentionally suppressed the initial reports of the cholera epidemic and has since denied or underplayed its gravity ... has intentionally suppressed information regarding increasing malnutrition, according to the report.

The report said that a pay-slip shown to them by government-employed doctor in Harare showed that in November she had earned the equivalent of 28 pence.

A nurse told the visiting doctors: "Malnutrition is very political. We are not supposed to have hunger in Zimbabwe. So even though we do see it, we cannot report it."

The report was endorsed by Mary Robinson, the former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights; Judge Richard Goldstone, the former UN Chief Prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda; and Desmond Tutu, the Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town.

They said in a preface to the report: "These findings add to the growing evidence that Robert Mugabe and his regime may well be guilty of crimes against humanity."

Dr David Sanders, a former lecturer at Zimbabwe's medical school, which has now shut down, said: "The statistics are staggering. In the last 15 years, the life expectancy has dropped from 62 years to 36 years of age."